Sri Lanka's prime minister said late last month that the island nation's debt-laden economy had 'collapsed' as it runs out of money to pay for food and fuel.
The result is a country hurtling towards bankruptcy, with hardly any money to import gasoline, milk, cooking gas and toilet paper.
Still, Mukherjee noted that Sri Lanka sits in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, so letting a country of such strategic significance collapse is not an option.Tropical Sri Lanka normally is not lacking for food, but people are going hungry. The U.N. World Food Program says nearly nine of 10 families are skipping meals or otherwise skimping to stretch out their food, while 3 million are receiving emergency humanitarian aid.
The government needed to boost its revenues as foreign debt for big infrastructure projects soared, but instead Rajapaksa pushed through the largest tax cuts in Sri Lankan history. The tax cuts were recently were reversed, but only after creditors downgraded Sri Lanka’s ratings, blocking it from borrowing more money as its foreign reserves sank. Then tourism flatlined again during the pandemic.
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